Sometimes the most gorgeous websites can have terrible rankings because they are not optimized properly, while a site that is basically simple and even horrible in appearance gets really high ratings. What is the principal difference?
There are some simple rules of thumb that you can use to optimize your website and all you need are a few simple web design skills. Whether redesigning a site or creating one from scratch, these rules should apply.
Never use frames when creating a website. If your site uses frames, you may want to think about changing to tables. If you are going to change your site, make certain your HTML is clean and free of unnecessary code.
Each page should include two to three paragraphs of keyword rich body text. For example, if you sell tanning products at your "The Tanning Place" website and the name of your closest competitor is "Up Town Tan," you will want to write a paragraph that goes something like this: Are you looking for an up town tan? Then come to the Tanning Place for that gorgeous up town tan. We feature only the best tanning products from the best sources to give you a beautiful up town tan. Not only are you promoting your own website, if someone enters the term "up town tan" into the search box, then your site will appear along with "Up Town Tan," and you can possibly convince someone who was looking for "Up Town Tan" to come to your site, instead.
The paragraph may seem a little repetitious and simplistic, but your goal is to attract web crawlers and not literary agents. Your high school English teacher will not praise your efforts, unless she has switch to SEO as her career.
Do not duplicate content on each page or even from site to site, if you own more than one site. Make certain each one is differentiated as far as content. It is better to have fewer pages with no duplicated text.
Use internal text links instead of images with links. Web crawlers will not find the link if it is buried behind an image. When you use images, make sure you include alt tags on all of them. This gives you an opportunity to tell the search engines what your site is all about, once again.
Splash pages may look impressive for visitors, but they do little to increase your rankings. Keep your graphics to a minimum because text is what improves your page ranking.
Do not try to attract or fool web crawlers by hiding text, such as making it the same color as the background. It may take a little time, but you will be caught and penalized for this and other black hat practices. I mention again, you are not being graded on your literary ability so do not be afraid to write a couple of keyword rich paragraphs.
Karen Vertigan Pope writes for Ciniva Systems, an award winning Virginia web design company.
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